Wednesday, September 2, 2015

The drilling dead.

I follow a few jiu jitsu folks on social media, and am connected to some of the younger jiu jitsu folks in the area. I see them constantly posting videos like this:
That looks cool, and it's a decent way to work up a sweat and clean up your footwork.. you know what else is good for that?
Ok. So don't be the goddamned Karate kid.
So how do we get practice in? We zombiefy those dead drills.
Zombies are dead, they come back to life (hopefully briefly) and we kill those suckers dead again.. and so should your drills.
This requires two things: a partner (you're probably drilling with a partner) and a coach..child.. girlfriend.. a reasonably well trained monkey.. some agent of randomness.
Drill way for a set period of time say 5 minutes.
In that window of time your coach/kid/monkey will at random intervals say "GO!" on go you and your partner are sparring.. for 30 seconds. Long enough if you're being slack and leaving space in your drills (or worse yet you're drilling stupid stuff) you will lose position. If you're truly drilling like a BOSS (do people still say this? I'm old.. you know what I mean) you should end up with the same outcome. Once that 30 seconds is over:
if you're still in position keep going,
if you've done better for yourself good for you hustle back and get after it.
if you've lost position FOR SHAME. You stay put and think about what you're doing with your life.
Rinse, repeat..
Mahalo.